Congress needs to stop California from banning vehicles powered by gasoline or diesel

OPINION:

An unfortunate quirk of the federal Clean Air Act is that it allows the Environmental Protection Agency to issue waivers to California in rare instances where the state’s unique topography requires more aggressive environmental standards than those imposed by the federal government. These waiver provisions were initially instituted to address smog in the Golden State, but California is now using them to mandate electric vehicles nationwide.

California has requested a waiver to regulate automobile emissions more aggressively than the federal government. Its approach would mean, as a practical matter, that all vehicles sold in California after 2035, just 10 years from now, would have to be electric.

That is a national problem because the Clean Air Act allows other states to piggyback on environmental standards set by California. About a dozen states, including the usual suspects such as New York and Illinois, are also prepared to ban cars and trucks powered by gasoline and diesel and allow the sale of only electric vehicles. The automakers would rather not have to design and build two fleets for North America. However, as long as they get subsidized, most automakers don’t care what they build.

The voters care. As you might imagine, most people don’t want a pack of state bureaucrats to decide what kinds of cars and trucks they should buy. When we asked about this in a survey a couple of years ago, about 80% of likely voters dared to think they should decide what kinds of cars and trucks to buy.

The bad news is that Team Biden granted the Golden State’s waiver request before stumbling out of office. The good news is that Congress can reverse that decision by using its authority under the Congressional Review Act to strike down agency actions by a departing and defeated administration such as Team Biden.

Given the unpopularity of this particularly destructive and pointless policy, what are we waiting for? The Trump administration took until this week to transmit the waiver approval to Congress to kill it. Now, we wait for Congress to do the right thing.

The lassitude in pursuing a remedy under the Congressional Review Act is not immediately explicable, but some of it is likely a matter of other priorities. To date, the administration seems to have been more interested in talking about the gyrations of Elon Musk, which affect approximately no one, than about the waiver that has been given to California, which will affect approximately every American.

Think about the president’s address to the joint session of Congress this week. A lot of time was spent on tariffs and dead people on the Social Security rolls, which are important but don’t require Congress to fix, and not a minute on the waiver given to California.

Call your congressman. Tell him to get on with dynamiting the waiver that Team Biden gave California, which will destroy your ability to buy the car or truck you want.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor to The Washington Times.